Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Sonny Boy - review

If you are a looking for a movie that is one part The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and another
part Unleashed, I would still suggest
you try a different movie because Sonny
Boy is off the rails. This movie is unpleasant and is not made well enough
to warrant any one searching it out other than hipsters looking for something
to watch ironically. It is exploitative, predictable, and it feels like a joke
on the audience.

A criminal named Weasel, played by Brad Dourif, robs and
kills a young couple. When he goes to fence the stolen items, he finds a baby
in the backseat. The redneck couple that fence the material decide to take the
baby. They name the baby Sonny Boy and raise him like an animal. The family cuts
off his tongue and train him to kill their enemies and eat them.

As I mentioned, this movie is unpleasant. A child getting
his tongue cut out and being drug behind a car is not something I ever need to
imagine. Meanwhile, the baby playing Sonny Boy is crying constantly like he is
miserable being on screen. Whatever it took to make that baby upset was not
worth it. The redneck family is insane. The man, Slue, is a hulk that gets mad
constantly, kicks a pig when it is in his way and slaps anyone who crosses him.
The woman, Pearl, is played by a cross-dressing David Carradine.

The movie quality is very poor. The screen looks so scratchy
that it appears to be edited in a rock tumbler. Between scene transitions, a
form of dueling banjos play as if to make the audience feel like at anytime the
characters will be raped by hillbillies. Not that there are not a few charms to
this movie. Brad Dourif could read the phone book and be awesome. He tries to
be memorable every time he is on screen. Paul L. Smith does a great job as
Slue. I used to think he was only memorable for being in Pieces but he really is great as acting like an abusive butt-head
in this film.

The last fifteen minutes has all the real action in the
movie. It feels like the bulk of the budget went to the shoot-out scene, which
was covered in explosions and fireballs. The problem is that this movie is
nothing new. It is a plot about a man who takes a pitiable man/creature and
makes him into his killing tool. When people figure out there is a killer amok
they gather a mob and go after them. They did not even make a story that seemed
to flow logically. At one point Sonny Boy is being attacked by an angry mob and
then the screen just says “Three days later.” We suddenly see Sonny Boy hanging
out in the desert and he apparently has a girlfriend.

Who decided to put David Carradine in a dress and have him
play a woman? It is so strange and then he also wrote and performed the intro
song in the film. It is distracting and it does not add anything to the movie.
There is a lot of filler in the movie in the attempt to make Sonny Boy seem
more vulnerable. Things like having him leer at a couple he comes across having
sex in an abandoned house.It does not
make him seem like a tragic character but more of a creep.

There few things that this movie has going for it do not
make it worth seeing. I guess if you are a fan of the bizarre or you might be a
fan of obscure Yugoslavian actress Savina Gersak then it might be worth your
time. Otherwise, you can see most of these actors doing much better movies. It is
amazing that a movie like this ever was green lighted. If it was funnier I
could excuse the weirdness but it was devoid of humor and instead seemed to
feed of the confusion of the audience.